Lemony Spinachy Couscous

Ever since I met this pasta/grain, I have been in love with it. Couscous. Yes, it's been a torrid love affair since I bought that bag of Israeli couscous at the westside market this past winter. Since then, I have also tried the whole wheat variety, sold quite inexpensively at Trader Joe's of all places and more expensively at the standard grocery store. Tips for cheap couscous: find it here.

The first time I made lemon spinach couscous (I mean it has spinach, it has lemon, what's not the adore?), I made it with Israeli couscous using a recipe that actually called for whole wheat. Do NOT make this error. This time (and many times before this) I used whole wheat couscous but Israeli is possible (with different cooking instructions. I'll include both.

Now, originally this recipe called for the good stuff, real lemon, lemon zest, fresh spinach, the whole shebang, but in my kitchen, we don't always have a lemon handy (or ever), and I've switched things out and created my own little version. This is a recipe we turn to now when we haven't made a menu plan and we want something quick and easy (and Garet eats it too because he thinks Spinach is green cheese and we have yet to correct this inaccurate assumption).


Lemony Spinachy Couscous
(original recipe found at cd kitchen online)

What you need:
about 2 tsp olive oil (I eyeball it)
1/2 c chopped red bell pepper (the frozen bag of mixed pepper also works just fine)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/3 c water
a few shakes of sea salt
a crank of pepper
1 c couscous (Israeli or whole wheat)
3 T lemon juice (or more to taste)
2 c. chopped, thawed frozen spinach (or more as desired)

1. In med. saucepan, heat oil over med heat. Add pepper, garlic, spinach. Cook 3-4 min. until tender.

2. Stir in water, salt, pepper, and 2 T lemon juice. Heat to boiling.
For Israeli couscous: add couscous, cover, and boil for 5 minutes. Check to make sure Couscous is soft and all water is gone. If it is still hard, add more water and boil until couscous is soft and water is gone.
For whole wheat (easier version): take pan off burner, add couscous and cover. Let stand 5 minutes. All water must be evaporated before it is ready.

3. Add 1 T or more lemon juice until couscous is sufficiently lemony to your tastebuds. Stir and serve.

It makes a lovely side dish with the eggplant fritter sandwiches: pictured here in a pita.

Spinach and Mushroom Souffle

Yes, by golly, today I am no longer a quarter of a century old. Today, I am officially 26, and in celebration of that, I thought I'd try my hand at a souffle.

I remember well my childhood viewing of Sabrina, in which Audrey Hepburn goes to culinary school in Paris and pulls out a deflated souffle, its bubble burst and folded in on itself. Even as a tyke, I thought, "That shit can't be easy."

And yet I pulled out the contents of my kitchen cabinets and set to work. First, I needed the recipe and in my old green veggie cookbook, purchased for $2 off the clearance shelves of Half-Priced Books on Mayfield, the Cook's Encyclopedia of Vegetarian Cooking. In the special occasion section was the culprit I was after, on page 236:

Warning: Will require the use of most of the pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils you own. Works best if you have a live-in significant other who offers to wash the dishes for you.





Spinach and Wild Mushroom Souffle
(serves 4)
What you need:
8 oz fresh spinach or 4 oz. frozen chopped spinach
4 T (1/2 stick) unsalted butter,  plus extra for greasing
1 garlic clove, crushed
6 oz. assorted wild mushrooms such as porcini, cremini, oyster, and portobello
1 c. milk
3 T four
6 eggs, separated
pinch of nutmeg
1/4 c. grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
An oven preheated to 375.

1. In preparation for my birthday quest, I had purchased a 9 oz. bag of fresh spinach from my grocer's produce section. Just last weekend, we had stopped in at the Bed, Bath, and Beyond while in Toledo for a weekend Michigan visit and used a buy $15 get $5 off your total order coupon to purchase a tea ball, a cheese slicer, a set of plastic cooking spoons, and a vegetable steamer. The steamer looks like an alien space helmet and unfolds itself outward to make an odd, hole-filled metal platter that sits over the top of a pan. With that, I was able to steam my fresh spinach to my heart's content, which I did in small batches. I tried for a larger one and ended up with the whole steamer contraption collapsing in on itself into the boiling water beneath it, and Art complained overmuch that I had probably "scarred the hell" out of his saucepan. So, little batches. After steaming, I placed the spinach into a sieve-style strainer. When I had all of the spinach steamed, I ran it under cool water and then pressed out the access water with the back of a new plastic cooking spoon against the grating of the strainer. Then I chopped it with a very large and hazardous kitchen knife.

2. Melt the butter in a med-sized saucepan. Then add the garlic and mushrooms, cooking over low heat until softened. I used a mix of oyster, cremini, shittake, and baby bella. Then turn up the heat and evaporate the juices. I had some trouble with this one and called in Art as a reinforcement, who declared "What juices?" When the mushrooms are dry (if they were ever wet), add the spinach. Our spinach was still very wet so we left it in there to evaporate awhile before transferring the mushroom-spinach mix to a bowl. It said to cover and keep warm, so I plopped the veggie steamer over the top.

3. Measure 3 T out of the 1 c. of milk and put the 3 T in a bowl. Then bring the rest of the milk to a boil in a saucepan. Stir flour and egg yolks in to the cold milk in the bowl and stir the heck out of it with a fork until well blended. Stir the boiling milk into the bowl with the flour, etc and then put all of that back in the saucepan. When it thickens, add the spinach mixture to the pan. Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

4. Butter a 4-cup souffle dish, especially the sides and sprinkle with a little parmesan. Or if, like me, you don't have a 4-cup anything, especially a souffle dish, use a 6-cup stoneware casserole dish instead. If you have a circle one, it will really look about the same as a souffle dish anyway.

5. Beat egg whites until stiff. This can take awhile. And god help you if you don't have a mixer to do it for you. Luckily, I do. Bring the spinach mix back to a boil and add a brand new plastic baking spoon full of beaten egg white to the mixture. Then fold the spinach mix into the egg white bowl. I have some experience with folding in this manner, as I have helped my mother make many a no-bake cheese cake, but of you are unaware: folding in baking means, essentially taking the spoon down one side of the bowl, then under the contents, then up the opposite side in easy, slow motions until everything is all mixed together but nice and airy.

6. Turn the mixture into the souffle dish and spread level. It will look a lot like ricotta cheese jello with flecks of green and brown. It even jiggles. Sprinkle the parmesan cheese on top and bake 25 minutes until golden brown and puffed. Serve immediately before souffle deflates.

Our oven is sort of high, so I baked it for 22 minutes. The result: a successful souffle, albeit, a little less puffed out than it was supposed to be due to being baked in a 6-cup instead of a 4-cup container. As soon as I cut into it to distribute pieces, the whole thing sort of caved in. I assume that's the deflate part. The pieces looked like odd slices of pie and were extremely fluffy and moist. The outside of the souffle tastes like the batter of a fried something or other and the inside tastes oddly similar to fake egg but with a hint of bitterness from the spinach and a slight crunch and earthy taste from the mushrooms.

As we sat there, eating our souffle, we felt very proud of ourselves, especially when Garet tried some and shouted, "I like it!" and asked for more. (He ate around the mushrooms.) For dessert, Art made me a homemade dark chocolate raspberry two layer cake with a white gonache drizzling over it. Not too shabby for a birthday dinner, if I do say so myself.

Free the Frittata

Art wanted tacos. So I was about to resign myself to a lackluster meal of whole wheat lavash (I refuse to bring in more than one wrap-like product into the house at the same time... I mean...it's basically a tortilla, right?) with a bunch of lettuce in it until I got an idea. As I was searching through the veggie cookbook yesterday for possible birthday feasts (my 26th is on thursday), I came, once again, across the veggie frittata. There is always a frittata in veggie cookbooks, unless of course, it's a vegan one, and I've yet to be tempted to try my hand at one for several reasons:

1. It looks like an omelet so I always think... hell, I could just make an omelet.

2. I don't like eggs. I mean, I'm fine with them in stir fries or cracked into pancake batter but as far as scrambling them or sunnyside-uping them, the taste leaves me sick to my stomach. This is mostly the result of my childhood dislike for the thought of eating pureed fetus chick, but compounded by the time my mom fed me undercooked overeasy ones and I got sick off of them. I do, admittedly, still eat them deviled, but come now, who doesn't?

3. Other food options inevitably look tastier and more daring, especially given my dislike of eggs anyway.

The second reason was remedied a few years or so ago when Art and I were at a Bob Evans and I wasn't that hungry and so, ordered the litest meal on the menu, which included a small order of fake eggs. You know the ones: they come in a carton, are essentially egg whites with yellow coloration for more of an "egg" feeling? So I sampled the fake eggs and loved them. They had all the good qualities of egg but without the heavy egg taste, which happens to be the aspect that upsets my tummy. They were just fake enough to fake my body into believing they were a new food group, and we've been fast friends ever since.

As for the other two reasons, well... I was in the mood for something new, but that would "go" with what the rest of the family was having: tacos with the meat, cheese, refried beans, onion, tomato, lettuce, and rice for Art and taco meat with cheese in a bowl for Garet (babysteps). Immediately, I remembered that frittata recipe. Frittata strikes me as Mexican sounding. I wonder if it is...

Anyway, the recipe was for onion and pepper frittata or some such thing, but as with all veggie recipes, I just use the premise of the recipe and add what I want and subtract what doesn't interest me. What I came up with, I'll call the Fajita Frittata. And it goes a little something like this:

Fajita Frittata
3 rings red bell pepper, quartered
2 slices tomato, quartered
a handful of fresh mushrooms (I used presliced baby bella)
1/2 c. fake egg
3 T shredded mexican cheese mix
1 T grated Parmesan cheese
enough olive oil for frying
salt and pepper
fajita powder (or other taco seasoning)

1. Heat about 1 T olive oil in a small skillet on med-high heat until it hisses when water is sprinkled on it. Add veggies and fry until edges are slightly blackened, flipping often.

2. Transfer veggies to a small bowl. Add fake egg and cheese and mix well. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and about 1t fajita powder. Mix again.

3. Put another 3/4 T of olive oil in the skillet. Coat evenly and put on low. Add egg mixture to skillet and shake to coat evenly. Cook about three minutes until top is set, rustling the edges often to move liquid egg to the bottom. This last bit didn't work so well for me so I just ended up flipping the thing and leaving it on for about a minute longer before flipping it back. It did the trick.

The siesta unfolded in my apartment tonight with the boys eating their various taco concoctions and me with my plate of seasoned frittata. Cooking this egg-pie thing (as Art called it) was quite enjoyable. It doesn't rip like an omelet, a common occurrence in my omelet making that usually results in scrambled eggs for breakfast. With the cheese in the "batter," the whole thing is more solid and fluffy, but with the bits of veggie peppering the top for an array of color. In addition, the fajita seasoning added an extra kick to the non-eggy flavor of the fake egg that complimented it nicely. Garet said it looked like pizza, but it wasn't enough to tempt him to give it a taste. Maybe next time...

The siesta will continue after we put Garet to bed. Art has been offered two classes to teach online for the fall and we're opening a bottle of margarita in celebration.

The New Recipe Commitment

Now that I'm really going on this blog, I'd hate to lose momentum. But then, the ability to write it depends heavily upon the fact of making something over the course of the day that I've never made and well, I'm betting on some weeks that are filled with old favorites (or new favorites). Tonight, for example, we had french toast. I make a mean french toast but it stands to reason that whether you burn the bread or let it get too soggy or not soggy enough, you know the basic gist of making french toast. It's not hard and hardly worth a blog.

The day before, I had a premade meal from Trader Joes and the day before that I ate Vegetable Stir Fry and Tofu at the Elephant Bar. I guess I could talk about the Elephant Bar meal. It's one I've had often. The restaurant is located in the mall at Toledo and while it's a chain, the one in Toledo is the only one that exists east of the Mississippi. Best Tofu I've ever had, so it's not that it isn't worth blogging. It's just that it doesn't feel new to me. The thrill is gone between me and the Elephant Bar and so, I doubt I'd give it the justice it deserves, much as a wife is bound to overlook mentioning some of the better qualities of her husband that a girlfriend would expound upon of a boyfriend. If you enjoy tofu and live anywhere near Toledo (or somewhere west of the Mississippi, you should go there and check it out for yourself. It's worth the trip.

However, back to the task at hand. I don't want to let my blogging go lax. So here's my goal: I pledge to you, dear reader, if you exist at all or care at all, to make or consume at least one new blog-worthy thing a week. I'll try to make it two or three over the course of the summer, because I have the time to dedicate to it that I don't have during the school year. But at least once is the minimum. I'm thinking if I write it out and send it into cyberspace, I'm more likely to keep the pact... with myself and you.

Eating Out: Mexican Style

I don't like Mexican. And no, this is not meant to be a pun based on the fact that I divorced a Mexican, though... there is that too. No, I'm talking Mexican food. It all started when I was a child and, like my six-year-old, I would eat the contents of a taco, but if you placed it on a tortilla, I wouldn't touch the thing. Then, there was that couple of years back in Erie when my mom worked at Taco Bell and brought us home soft tacos as snacks on a too-consistent basis. I cannot eat them too this day. But mostly, I don't enjoy the grease of it. I don't enjoy the bland mix of cornflour, meat, cheese, and tomato. And I certainly don't like when they add that blasted hot salsa to things.

I will admit that I do enjoy a good margarita.

So you can imagine my surprise when Art and I went to the mexican restaurant Los Habaneros, located on Van Aken north of the Warrensville/Northfield/Van Aken/Chagrin intersection next to the Fresh Market and I actually liked... scratch that... loved the food.

We walked in and the friendly waiter (he called us his amigos) took us to a table. It was 2 dollar margarita day but we managed to resist it. I order water. Art, the cola, and the waiter brought us some corn chips and salsa to snack on. The salsa was a medium. I would have preferred mild but I didn't mind the bite of it too much. Art really loved the salsa.

Then the waiter came back to take our orders, but we had to ask for more time to decide, because there was so much that looked good. Art had a hard time choosing between the enchilada platter and the steak tacos. I was having a unique restaurant quandary for me, in that, I had several vegetarian options to choose from, but after much debate, I decided on the veggie fajita, because I was in a zucchini mood. Art went enchilada. And before we had time to finish the chips, our plates were in front of us. I can't comment to much on Art's plate, though I did try the cheese enchilada and it was quite tasty.

For my part, the only issue I might gripe about was that all the carbs were made with white flour. But the mexican rice was flavorful with a little bit of pea in it. The refried beans had a light layer of cheese on it, and the veggies... well... they were perfectly cooked. Not too soggy, not too crisp. There was a giant heap on one side of the plate filled with zucchini, summer squash, big slices of mushroom, tomato, bell pepper, and onion. As I've mentioned before, I don't enjoy onion, but it was so mild, I didn't mind it, though I did give a lot of the onion slices to Art, as he loves his onion. With the veggie platter came three warm fajita sheets wrapped in tin foil. I filled two of the fajitas with a light coat of beans and rice before heaping on the veggies and eat them with contented slurps.

It was the best Mexican food I'd ever had in my life. And I've been to my fair share of "authentic mexican" places, a current craze in Toledo. Usually, the only thing on the menu I can eat, though, is a veggie soft taco: soft shell, shredded cheese, shredded lettuce, and tomato.... sarcastic yum. Here though, there was a cornucopia of vegetables, well prepared and waiting to be eaten.

We both agreed to return again. Art still means to try the steak tacos. I aim for the spinach enchiladas. And as the waiter told us "adios amigos," we, overstuffed but happy, exited the restaurant, leftovers in hand.

Planting

Upon returning from the long weekend Michigan trip in honor of Memorial weekend (and if I'd forgotten the memorial day time-frame, I would have been reminded by the throng of folks gathered in the street in front of the town monument to killed-in-action soldiers in Weston-- home to a church, a graveyard, a post office, a bar and nothing else-- that blocked my path to Bob Evans on Monday morning), I made the decision: tomorrow, the garden must go in. So on Tuesday, despite fear of downpour, Art and I piled in the car with directions to a recommended greenhouse, a hoe, and hope that we would not end up horribly, horribly lost.

Lowe's (not to be confused with the hardware store) Greenhouse is located in the middle of nowhere, past a slew of houses up for sale and an abandoned (or at least it seemed to be to us) restaurant. About a half hour after entering the car, I arrived. The drive itself, though, was not too cumbersome. It took us past a lot of parks and woodsy areas and attractive house eye-candy to stare at. Once there, I searched out the vegetable section. The greenhouse was impressively massive, with an entire section dedicated to fruit trees and several to flowering plants. In the back of the main greenhouse, the vegetables rest with clear labeling over each variety of not just crop but also specific variety of that crop. All the beefsteak tomatoes, for example, were underneath the index card-sized paper that read "Heirloom Beefsteak" followed by the plants special characteristics, as well as tasting notes.  The same applied to every single solitary vegetable plant Lowe's carried, and it was a wide selection. There were at least ten varieties of non-hot peppers. And nearly twenty different types of heirloom tomatoes. I was in a candy store for vegetarians. Art could do nothing but follow after my excited leaps and wild bee-lines as I ooed and ahed.

In the end, we chose nineteen dollars worth of plants: Three heirloom tomatoes (Beefsteak, Mr. Stripy, and Purple Cherokee), two sweet peppers (red bell and purple bell), two eggplants (one standard variety and one called "fairytale" that's striped purple and white), two green zucchini plants, and one lone kale (blue ridge) so I could have some for the fall and maybe transplant it to a pot for the winter. I also got a packet of bush cucumber seeds, planting four hills in total.

Plants at my feet in the passenger seat, we drove the half hour back to civilization and planted the crops on our little 4 by 14 plot. There was room left for one plant, so today, we went back and planted one hill of edamame and put the cages up around the tomato plants so we won't have to deal with staking as much.

All in all, I'm excited for the future culinary creations that will result from my community garden endeavor. Surely some new recipes will find their way to the blog in the near future, featuring purple peppers and pink tomatoes.

Traveling Food and Memorial Weekend Feast

One thing about constant weekend jaunts to Michigan I've noticed over the course of my year in Cleveland: food goes bad. Perfectly fresh leftover eggplant is tuesday's liquified mess in the trash bin. This past weekend, I took yogurt so as to have breakfast while away, only to have it spoil on the way up, cooler be damned. The end of the week before a weekend Michigan trek has become a testament to our parishibles. We stuff them in our mouths in odd combinations just to get them used up. Naturally, we forgot about the zucchini we just bought and it went bad by Monday.

On the plus side, Kroger had a steak sale in Michigan, so Art bought four big steaks for him and his mother. On Sunday, while Art installed a much-needed ceiling fan replacement in the dining room, Art's mom and I made a big fancy steak dinner. She made the steaks and I made marinated portabello mushroom caps (on sale at Meijer), which is my go-to on-the-grill steak veggie alternative. Truth be told, I enjoy the mushroom caps far more than I ever enjoyed the steak from my meat-eating days. For simplicity's sake, I call them portabello mushroom steaks. And the key, as with a lot of steaks, really is in the seasoning.

I found a recipe for it online years ago that involved a marinade with fruity wine and oil. I replaced the wine with fruit juice and vinegar. But I've long-since lost the recipe. Instead, I vigorously sprinkle the caps with sea salt and pepper, then garlic powder and maybe a pinch of cayenne for a kick. Then I immerse them in strawberry balsamic vinagrette, though any fruit balsamic vinagrette will do. In Michigan, I didn't have my strawberry stuff handy so I bought pomagranette blueberry instead and that too was divine.

Then, after marinating for at least 30 minutes (1-2 hours is preferable), you put the caps on the grill for about 5-10 minutes, flipping at the halfway point. As with steak, the key is to keep a close eye. In the apartment, we don't have a grill so I fry them up in a large skillet and this works too, though lacks that touch of charcoally taste that grilled food (even gas-grilled food) inevitably has.

My favorite way to eat my mushroom steak is with a side of raw kale leaves and tomato. The sweet black "gravy" from the mushroom really complements the bitterness of the kale. This past weekend, we had side salads with ranch instead, as well as a baked sweet potato a la Long Horn (cut in half with a glop of butter and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon and sugar. Then, an apple crisp for dessert.

It was a cookout fit for the holiday weekend. And luckily, the leftover mushrooms made the journey back to Cleveland untarnished, and I had the fried version of my mushroom steak again tonight.